


Roar the Heavens Apart

by Chronicler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AO3 doesn't have a tag that sums up the level of kink in this..., Abuse, Additional Warnings Apply, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Anal Gaping, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Bestiality, Blood, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Bondage and Discipline, British, British English, Cutting, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emetophilia, Face-Fucking, Fisting, Friendship, Genital Mutilation, Genital Torture, Knives, Love, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Master/Slave, Mental Anguish, Mental Coercion, Mental Disintegration, Mental Health Issues, Mutilation, Oral Sex, Pansexual Character, Past Child Abuse, Penectomy, Poor Reek, Prostate Massage, Prostate Milking, Psychological Torture, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Ramsay is his own warning, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rectal Prolapse, Rough Oral Sex, Scat, Self-Harm, Sexual Slavery, Slice of Life, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Twisted love, Verbal Abuse, Verbal Humiliation, Vomiting, Watersports, also weirdly not a tag, armour, armour kink, only referenced, which weirdly isn't a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:50:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone tells Reek that he used to be someone else, that he wasn't always just his Master's pet. But he doesn't believe them. He knows he has always been Reek, and always will be, until he's rotting in the ground.</p><p>Reek's Master, Lord Ramsay Bolton, is turning the seven kingdoms red in his quest for the Iron Throne. And Reek awaits him each time he's gone, and submits each time he returns to the Dreadfort.</p><p>After all, what else can Reek do? He knows what he is, and who his Master is. And, in the end, there are worse things than having a place to call home and someone to belong to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roar the Heavens Apart

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: I didn't use warnings. Though, it's Thramsay, so it's its own warning. But if there's anything you don't want to read, there's a good chance it's at least mentioned in this story. Caveat lector: let the reader beware. On the other hand, whatever your kink, there's a good chance it's in here too.
> 
> Thank you to Matty and Barb G for beta reading, even though this isn't their fandom.
> 
> It will look better with images, and my work skin turned on. Though stripping my skin would be strangely apt. But still, it will look better if you don't.
> 
> I'd be very grateful for any feedback, I just want to learn. But yes, I already know what a sick fuck I am, so no need to tell me. To quote Tyrion Lannister: 'Let me give you some advice, bastard. Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armour, and it can never be used to hurt you.'

 

_Fair Weather_

_This level reach of blue is not my sea;_  
_Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,_  
_Whose quiet ripples meet obediently_  
_A marked and measured line, one after one._  
_This is no sea of mine. That humbly laves_  
_Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm._  
_I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;_  
_They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm._

 _So let a love beat over me again,_  
_Loosing its million desperate breakers wide;_  
_Sudden and terrible to rise and wane;_  
_Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide_  
_That casts upon the heart, as it recedes,_  
_Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds._

_Dorothy Parker_

~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~

Reek scrubbed and scrubbed, down on his hands and knees, the cold soaking up through his tattered rags.

Other than sweeping up the reeds strewn across his Master’s floor, and removing traces of moss, he wasn’t really sure how he was meant to be making the patchwork of stone look. But then, he never really knew the object of the tasks his Master set him. He simply obeyed in the hope he wouldn’t be punished. And yet, he always was.

‘Reek!’ his Master yelled as he threw open the doors to his chambers and burst into the room. He wore the remnants of his bloodied, burnished black armour, had probably left the rest scattered through the castle for Reek to retrieve. ‘My Reek! You look deliciously filthy down in the dirt. I scored a great victory today: see,’ he held out his hands like a proud child: they were stained red. ‘Be a good little pet and lick me clean.’

Bile rose up and burned Reek’s throat, but he pushed aside the sodden, tatty old cloth and crawled towards his Master.

He gagged as he sucked the heavy copper of blood from the fingers pressed into his mouth, the sweet stench overwhelming. His Master looked down at him, looked elated, his eyes glowing with fire and his smile wide. Reek gripped his Masters thighs with the fingers he had left and worked his tongue and lips over probing flesh.

It wasn’t a surprise when Reek found himself pressed back onto the floor, his clothes easily ripped away and the chill of the ground numbing him even as it grazed his skin. His Master pushed into him, the tearing pain barely registering anymore.

‘Reek, Reek, it rhymes with _weak_ ,’ his Master managed to gasp out before words deserted him and he snarled and grunted. He pounded into Reek. Filled him with his seed. Laughed, fingers playing in the white, sticky mess leaking from the scar covering the wreckage of Reek’s crotch. His other hand gripped Reek’s throat, gripped it tight, and Reek squeezed his eyes shut.

Over him, covering him, surrounding him, ‘ _Mine_ ,’ Reek’s Master hissed into his ear.

‘ _Yours_ ,’ Reek tried to whisper back, before his breath snuffed out. _Yours._

~X~

Birds were singing when Reek opened his eyes. He squinted into the light pushing through the thick glass of the windows. Lead cut it into diamonds, they littered patterned shadows across the floor. He was curled up on the cold flagstones beside his Master’s massive, carved wooden bed, with its pillars and furs. And he was grateful for that, it was better than sleeping in the kennels with the hounds. Though, it had been warmer out there, pressed tight to the dogs. But they were all fangs and claws and their desire as hard and insistent as his Master’s.

He yawned against his fist, against the stubs of his missing fingers. But his Master always said taking them had been for his own good, to teach him who he belonged to. And his Master had, of course, been right.

His Master grunted and stretched, stepping over him as he got out of bed.

‘Reek, Reek, it rhymes with _leak_ ,’ his Master murmured, voice gravelly. Laughing at his own joke he pulled Reek to his knees and clamped Reek’s chin in his hand as he pissed into his mouth.

Reek forced himself to stay still, eyes screwed shut as the bitter warmth gagged him and ran out his nose as he spluttered.

‘Messy little bitch,’ his Master said, pushing Reek’s face to the ground to lick up what he’d spilt. The stone was bitty against his tongue and grazed his nose, but his Master’s hand against the back of his neck was almost a caress.

‘Be ready for me tonight, pet, and be good while I’m gone. I have important matters of state to address. Your Master is a very important man. You’re lucky I even let you lick my boots,’ his Master said after Reek dressed him, fumbling to finish tying the laces of the leather vest with his useless hands. It was hard to tell when his Master was being deliberately sardonic, and when he meant what he said.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ he answered, voice soft, trying to go unnoticed as he looked down at the unforgiving flagstones. He twitched when his Master came close, his treacherous body tensing to run, though he never would. He braced himself for a slap, for a punch. But that unyielding hand clasped the back of his neck again, and chapped lips brushed against his cheek.

‘Silly little thing – I shall return this evening. You won’t be alone for long.’

Reek’s breath caught and his heart swelled like it would burst.

~X~

He spent the day cleaning his Master’s chambers. Polishing brass; replacing the logs in the gigantic fireplace; sneezing as he shook dust from the thick, woven rugs; reverent as he pulled clean sheets onto the bed and fluffed the pillows, mumbling apologies to the cavernous room when they slipped through his few fingers.

Scrubbing the copper lined wooden bathtub clean, he paused. Sometimes, when he was good, and he always tried to be good, his Master bathed him. Not often of course, he liked Reek to stink of him, of his sweat and his seed, mixed with Reek’s own. Said Reek was like an oak barrel of fine mead that needed to age and ripen. But, just occasionally, he would strip off Reek’s ruined, dingy rags, sit him in the water and clean him with a soft cloth.

Just thinking about it, he felt hot pressure between his legs, his skin swelling and tightening. He supposed he used to have his manhood there, like his Master’s, before his Master took it with a knife. But the memory of it didn’t quite feel real. Just another phantom. Eyes falling closed, he pushed the heel of his hand against his crotch with a breathy moan, thinking of his Master’s temporarily-gentle hands on him in soapy water.

His eyes snapped open, ‘I’m sorry!’ he gasped out. ‘I’ll be good,’ he muttered as he scrubbed harder, made everything shine, made it perfect. Must keep Master happy.

~X~

‘What d’ya want?’ Batilda, the crotchety old cook asked him when he went into the kitchen in the bowels of the castle. Reek kept his head down, eyes riveted to the floor, shoulders twitching. Leaning towards him she gave a wet sniff then made a sound of disgust. ‘Shun’t ya be choking on the Bastard’s rancid cock?’

Reek swallowed hard to repress the bile threatening to make him gag from fear, then whispered, ‘You mustn’t say things like that about my Master.’

She harrumphed, hands on her ample hips. ‘He don’t scare me. Anyway, what’d he want with an old hag like me when he has you to play with?’

‘You mustn’t,’ Reek repeated to the flagstones, ridged and uneven down here where there were only servants. He started to shake.

She sighed, quick and sharp. ‘If you was still a man you wun’t let him take you up the arse like some whore’s cunny.’

‘You mustn’t,’ he muttered again.

Pots clattered as she went back to her work, but Reek didn’t dare look up. ‘ _What do you want?_ ’ she asked again, over the banging and scraping.

Reek took a deep, shuddering breath and stuttered out: ‘M–my Master – Lord Snow – said I am to help prepare his food, and take it to his chambers for his return. He will dine there rather than in the banquet hall with his father. He t-told me to. This morning while I helped him dress. I’m his m-manservant.’

‘You’re not even a man,’ she spat back at him, and something about the way she sneered was worse than when his Master said it. At least his Master wanted him. Desired him. Needed him. But the grubby cook looked at him as if he were nothing.

Always hunched over, he straightened just a little. ‘Are you disobeying Master’s orders?’

She paused. Silent. And when Reek dared to glance up he saw the terror in her eyes. His Master inspired that, and the emotion Reek felt settle in his chest was almost pride, if he were capable of such a thing.

‘No,’ she said eventually, sounding annoyed, and Reek shook harder, clasping his ruined hands together and wringing them. ‘No, I will of course do as the young Lord instructs. But stay out of everyone’s way and don’t touch anything, you’ll get it dirty.’

So Reek hung back, kept his head down, tried to ignore the kitchen maids who kept looking over at him, whispering and sniggering. Stood in the billowing heat from the stone ovens that took up a full wall, his stomach grumbling from the smell of meats roasting and breads baking. Waited until an ornate silver tray, worth more than his life, was pressed into his hands. ‘Don’t drop it,’ Batilda said and scowled at him, then went back to work. He balanced it on his palms and grasped it with his few fingers, like claws around the edge.

He felt terror every step of the way, but he got the tray safely to his Master’s chambers, carefully deposited it on the table, knelt on the floor and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Each time he found himself nodding off he shook himself awake and sat bolt upright. Master would be angry if he found him asleep.

The light faded to shadows, and he lit candles, before going back to wait in position.

Head heavy, ready to crumple to the floor, he jolted to attention when the large, intricately carved oak doors to the chamber were flung open, banging as they hit the wall, and his Master stormed into the room. Reek’s whole body came alive, each nerve ending tingling, his wasted muscles tensing as he looked up, watched his Master pace back and forth as he ranted and raved.

‘My Lord father, that _fucking_ cunt! You know what he did? Do you?!’

‘No, my Lord,’ Reek murmured, deciding that not answering was even more likely than answering to lead to punishment.

Not seeming to even notice Reek’s words, he kept going, his body wiry fury as he prowled across the room and back until Reek became dizzy watching him.

‘He’s looking for a wife! Some whore to give him true-born heirs. Some high-born _bitch_ who’ll spread her legs and take his shrivelled old cock, then push out squalling runts. Over my dead body. Over his dead body! And while I keep his snivelling subjects in line! While I lead his knights in battle and run the Dreadfort and get fuck all in return! Because my whore of a mother lacked the brains to marry the man who put me inside her! Everything I do for that fucking –’

He kept going, on and on, while Reek watched and waited. The candlelight danced over his Master’s features. And yet again it struck Reek how terribly handsome his Master was, with his square jaw and ready smile. Reek hated how all the serving girls fawned over him. Well, they did at first, until they realised what kind of a man he was. The depths of his sadism. It wasn’t that Reek didn’t know, how could he not? But the madness that poured off his Master in waves just made Reek feel strangely protective, and he gazed up adoringly with wide eyes as his Master came over and grabbed Reek’s chin.

‘Are you even listening to me, pet?’

‘Of course, my Lord,’ he answered, his voice hushed, reverent.

‘Are you going to make me feel better? Give me some comfort?’ His grip tightened, fingertips digging into Reek’s flesh.

‘Of course, my Lord.’

His Master hummed approvingly then flung himself down in a high backed chair at the oak table, and whipped off the white sheet of muslin that covered the tray of food.

Reek shuffled over to kneel by his side.

‘I pray the food is to your liking, Master. I – I could only watch, but they gave me cold meats to bring you and –’

‘ _Shhh_ ,’ his Master instructed him around a mouthful of food, and Reek clamped his lips together.

He watched as his Master tore off a strip of gammon, his teeth glinting in the flickering light, and chewed. He pulled a morsel free with his fingers and dropped his open hand to his side, the meat laying in his palm.

For a moment Reek was paralyzed with uncertainty as to what he was meant to do, even as his stomach grumbled again and he clutched at his concave belly to quiet it.

‘Eat, pet – before I change my mind.’

Moving so quickly his head spun, Reek pushed his face against his Master’s hand. Using only his tongue, he pulled the meat into his mouth, the flavour exploding against his taste buds. It tasted so good, he barely even felt the pain from his jagged, shattered teeth. He hadn’t eaten for days, and he groaned, he couldn’t help it, and his Master laughed while Reek lapped at his palm, licked it clean.

There followed chunks of bread, potato, cake, fruit, all hand fed to Reek until he felt sick. His Master even held his fine silver goblet down at Reek’s level so he could finish off the last dregs of honey-sweet mead.

‘How do you feel, pet?’ his Master asked as he rose from the table, grasping Reek by the hair and pulling him towards the bed.

Dragged to his feet, Reek stumbled as he tried to find his footing, tried to keep up with his Master. Tears stung his eyes as strands of his filthy hair were ripped from his head.

‘Lucky, my Lord, I’m so lucky you’re so good to me. Better than I deserve,’ he gasped out, words tripping over each other.

His Master hummed in agreement as he flung Reek onto the bed and started to strip off his own clothes, the fine black brocade, cotton, and silk thrown unheeded to the floor.

‘Get undressed. _Quickly_.’ There was a snarl in his Master’s voice that wormed its way into Reek’s guts and settled there with the unaccustomed food.

Lying on his back, on the fresh laundry that smelt of lye but was going to smell of him now, he watched the strong muscles of his Master being uncovered. His thick chest, his compact but powerful body. His jet black curls were left tousled by the fast way he haphazardly pulled his singlet over them. He never showed any regret, never any forethought, and really he was almost as careless with his own body as he was with everyone else's. Reek envied him that. His ability to live always in the present. To be reckless and let the past disappear under the waves the moment it slipped out of his grasp. And he was so clean, as he uncovered pale scrubbed skin, in contrast to Reek’s own matted hair, turned to a premature grey, and skin made dusky with layers of accumulated dirt. And so smooth, clean shaven in comparison to Reek’s short, scraggly beard.

‘I said _quickly_ , pet,’ his Master paused to say, a clear warning in the battering current of his voice.

‘Sorry – sorry, Master,’ Reek mumbled as he hurriedly pulled at his clothes, the sour stench hitting him as he raised his arms. Just for a second he paused before he grasped at his trousers, a faint memory of shame haunting him. It tickled at the back of his mind that he wasn’t what he had once been, _who_ he had once been. He remembered his Master looking down at him with a gleeful grin and a bloodied gelding knife in his hand, and the pain, the pain, the pain… Then blackness, and when he awoke the world had been different. Who he had been was dead.

‘Adapt or die’, someone had told him once, he wasn’t sure who. Perhaps the dead-him had had a sister. But it didn’t matter now.

He’d once asked his Master what happened to the rod of flesh he’d taken. ‘Fed it to the dogs as a treat,’ he’d answered and smiled.

And he smiled now, smiled as he watched Reek pull off the last of his clothes. He always smiled at his creation. He was a cruel God, but still, Reek’s God.

‘You’re thinking again,’ he said, climbing onto the bed and grasping Reek’s throat with a tight grip as he straddled him. ‘Your pretty little head wasn’t made for thinking.’ He leaned down close, his look so intent, so focussed, so vicious, and Reek’s heart stuttered in his chest. ‘I will have to keep you in the moment, won’t I?’

‘Yes, Master,’ Reek murmured, looking up into eyes the blue-grey of a winter sky. _Winter is coming_ , flitted through his mind, though he had no memory of whence it came. And _no_ , he told himself, as he was manhandled over onto all fours, _no – it’s already here_. But first came chill, then stupor, then the release of letting go.

The bed dipped before he heard his Master’s bare feet padding across the cold stone, and knew he must be retrieving the bowl of lard from the tray. Back in the kitchen, over the sniggering of the scullery maids, Reek had barely managed to stammer out that his Master had requested it. Everyone knew what Reek was. Everyone. But what did it matter? He was the one warm in his Master’s bed, while they slept in the bowels of the castle and squabbled over who got the patch of floor nearest the hearth.

He held on to that thought, how lucky he was to be here, to be alive, while he gripped the sheets as best he could, and screwed his eyes tight, his cheek pressed to the feather mattress. Still on his knees, arse in the air, while his Master worked him open. His Master wasn’t careful, wasn’t patient, Reek would never expect him to be. But it was still a long, slow task and his Master growled in frustration. Reek spread his legs and relaxed as best he could, his Master grinding out, ‘ _Let me in, take my fist you ungrateful cunt._ ’

Stretched around his Masters knuckles, the pain made him nauseous and he bit down on the sheet to stifle his moans.

A sharp smack to his arse cheek. ‘You know I like to hear you scream and see you cry. Don’t make me get my belt before I’m ready, pet.’

He slid his fingers out and Reek stayed still, didn’t dare move while he felt the bed dip and settle as his Master got more lard. With a scrape of his nails he forced his fingers back inside. He growled as he moved faster, while Reek sobbed into the linen. And all the while his Master kept talking, talking, his voice barrelling into Reek with as much force as his hand.

‘I should take you back out to the kennels, have all the hounds take turns mounting you. But you’d like that wouldn’t you? I wager they’ve all had you already, _fucking_ whore that you are.’ He grunted as he worked, kneeling behind Reek and seeming to tower over him as he worked his way into Reek’s guts. ‘Did they knot you when they bred you? Did it feel like my fist? You couldn’t get enough of their spunk filling you up, could you? I know you can never get enough of mine. Never be _filthy_ enough. Fucking slag, fucking whore, _fucking_ _bitch_. I know what you are, I know what you need, I know –’

And the words became waves that rolled over Reek as the flattened hand pushed into him, and Reek floated into the endless expanse of it.

Reek couldn’t hold back a yelp as the apex of his Master's hand breached him before he slid in up to his wrist, the pain lessening a little. And each time his body jerked forward, Reek’s balls ricocheted back and forth in their wrinkled sack, nothing there to stop them. He’d asked his Master once why he’d taken the stem and left the root: ‘So you can want but can’t have,’ his Master had answered.

And how the hand, curled into a fist, relentlessly pounded into him.

Sometimes, the things his Master did to him felt good. But sometimes they just hurt. The fingers had felt good, prodding and stroking and reaching that spot inside him that made his remaining toes curl. But this was just like being beaten and he gasped with each forward thrust, waited it out, waited for his Master to spend his fury.

And the waves receded as his Master half collapsed over him, his sweat dripping onto Reek’s heaving back. He dragged his hand free with a wet squelch but the burning pain only got worse and Reek felt like his guts were falling out, cold and exposed.

‘ _Please, Master, please –_ ’ he managed to gasp out.

But his Master only laughed, his voice coaxing, as cloying and burning as melted butter. ‘Look at you gaping for me. How pretty and red you are, like a rose, but you don’t smell like one, do you Reek? It’s your fault I do this, for being such a whore,’ he said, his voice down low, and Reek could feel his breath as he examined him, as he spit into Reek’s hole. He poked at it with his blunt fingers, and Reek whimpered as he felt his insides being pushed back into place, felt himself contracting and quivering.

His Master leaned over his back, covered him, shoved his fingers into Reek’s mouth. ‘Such a dirty little thing. Lick me clean.’

Reek was hit by the stench and bitty taste of his own shit and the copper of his own blood. But he did what he was told, sucked and licked even as he gagged, knew his lips must be smeared brown and red. Tears ran down his cheeks and mucus dripped from his nose, and he felt damp and dirty down to his bones.

Pushed onto his back, he lay there as his Master looked down at him, admired him. He never had disgust in his eyes. Vicious madness, yes, but not disgust. He looked at Reek as though, in his own strange way, Reek were perfect.

And for a brief moment of calm, the waves stopped buffering against Reek, the seas calmed and plateaued, and his own shifting eyes of blue and grey and green looked up into his Master's.

But the moment quickly passed, and soon the storm raged again.

‘Just fucking take it,’ his Master spat down at him as he grabbed Reek’s hair and shoved his prick past Reek’s lips. He didn’t give Reek time to breathe, time to beg, just pushed the hot, twitching, demanding mass of it till it hit the back of Reek’s throat. Reek gagged around it as it battered into him, tried to keep his jagged teeth covered so they didn’t cut taut flesh.

All he could smell was the musk of his Master, sex and clean sweat, even as coarse curls bristled against his nose.

But his Master was too big, and it hurt, and the food was burning up through his chest and throat, and as his Master let out a roar and spurted his seed, it splashed across Reek’s cheek and he collapsed over the edge of the bed and retched up the feast from earlier. Bits of barely digested food caught in the back of his nose while the rest hit the floor.

‘Filthy pup,’ his Master said, pushing him over the edge of the bed. Reek landed in his own mess, dared a glance over the edge of the bed and found his Master laid out, flushed and chest heaving, still idly stroking himself through it.

‘Don’t just sit there: lick it all up,’ he said, looking over at Reek.

‘Master?’

‘You heard me.’ The edge to his voice could cut glass. ‘Don’t make me come down there. You wore me out, I’m too tired to get my belt tonight: next time. And you better not be too loose after that or I’ll find a replacement for you, a new Reek. Do you know how many others would give their eyeteeth to be where you are? And I’d take them too: all their _fucking_ teeth. There’s a new scullery maid I’ve been meaning to make the acquaintance of…’

And so, still leaking from his hole, Reek held his breath to block out the smell and licked his own mess from the floor, the acrid bile of it. Even once he heard his Master quietly snoring, he didn’t dare stop. Gagging and having to eat three times the same piece of mushy white that may have once been potato, he kept going till he was done, then curled up on the wet floor, closed his eyes, and fell into an exhausted sleep.

~X~

Reek didn’t know what to do with himself when his Master was away. He’d given Reek a mockery of a kiss, that had admittedly left Reek weak at the knees, and ridden West with his troops. He was going into battle against Jon Snow, he’d said, which a small part of Reek suspected should mean something to him, but he steadfastly didn’t think about it. So he wandered the castle and its grounds, at night mostly, when there was no one around. The child servants threw stones at him when they saw him, called him a ghost and laughed. But he couldn’t blame them, he saw himself that way.

All he could do was await his Master’s return.

He had finally ventured out in sunlight to see if he could overhear news of his Master’s campaign, and was halfway across the Dreadfort’s wide, stone and mud courtyard when he heard, ‘I see Ramsay left his plaything behind,’ and froze.

He turned around, trying and failing to resist scratching manically at his hair. The itching had been getting worse for days. He kept his eyes trained on the ground. Strewn with animal dung and bones it was almost as filthy as he was. And, hemmed in by walls made of stones each big enough to crush a man, it was always dim and dreary out here.

Lord Roose Bolton made a sound of disgust. ‘Do you have lice? Flees? For goodness sake clean yourself up.’ To Reek’s relief the shiny black boots his eyes were trained on backed further away.

‘My Lord wouldn’t like it,’ Reek stammered out, still working his few fingers through his matted hair and scratching at his scalp till he could feel his fingertips wet with blood.

‘ _I_ am your lord, you wretched creature. Ramsay is merely my bastard. I should have had him kill you as soon as I saw what he’d reduced you to. It would have been a mercy for us all; especially you. For a thousand years the Boltons have flayed our enemies when it is the most _advantageous_ thing to do, not for _pleasure_. Do you even remember who you are?’

Overhead, the square of sky darkened to grey as the dull sun passed behind a cloud.

‘I’m Reek.’

Lord Bolton made a sound of annoyed impatience, before continuing in his rich, deep voice, ‘I mean who you were _before_ Ramsay gave you that ridiculous name?’

‘I have always been Reek.’ He dared to glance up, saw Lord Bolton wreathed in shadows, robed in plain but richly tailored black leather and fur. The Boltons’ flayed man sigil, the skinned figure hung upside down on a cross, embossed over his chest. Pale, balding, and clean shaven, Lord Bolton looked like an eagle displaying its skinned prey. The walls rose up around him, the massive wooden gates behind, the rusting bronze lock keeping out the world. They were trapped together in an armour-plated cage.

‘You are Theon Greyjoy, Ironborn, the last living son of Balon Greyjoy and heir to the Iron Islands. Specialising in roving, raiding, and raping, they’re no better than pirates and only have power at sea. But you _were_ still a prince, when my bastard captured you and brought you here. And look at you now. He sent your father a messenger with your decaying cock, and he no longer wished for your return. Did Ramsay tell you that? And your father was right: you’re no use to anyone. Last I heard you still had your bollocks, but as you can no longer produce heirs Ramsay may as well flay those also. “We do not sow”, is the Greyjoys’ house motto, and strangely prophetic as it turns out.’

The words washed over Reek like the salty sea stripping him down to his bones. And there was almost nothing left there of whoever Lord Bolton claimed he used to be. Besides, nothing anyone ever said here was true. Even his Master told nothing but tall tales. ‘I'm Reek. I have always been Reek. I will be Reek forever until I rot in the ground,’ he mumbled, chin touching his chest.

‘You’re as much of a lunatic as my mad dog of a son. You’re as bad as each other. And don’t think that I don’t know what you do together. I always heard you were a pervert, even before he got his claws into you.’

Reek just stood there, shaking and scratching.

The sound Lord Bolton made was almost a hiss. ‘Fine, get out of my sight. And make yourself useful, see Castellan Bonel to be assigned duties till my bastard returns.’

‘Yes, m’Lord,’ Reek managed to get the words out, half bowing, before turning and shuffling away as fast as he could back towards the Dreadfort's main keep. But he knew, knew down to his shattered and badly healed bones, that Roose Bolton wasn’t _his_ Lord. Ramsay was.

~X~

It seemed like a terrible idea, assigning him to the kitchens. He’d expected the stables, or the kennels. As much as the hounds scared him, it was easier than facing people. But he stood under Batilda’s gaze, scratching his head and staring resolutely at the floor.

‘What exactly am I meant to do with you? You get more disgusting each time I see you.’

‘The castellan said I am to offer my services in the kitchens,’ Reek told the floor.

Batilda harrumphed. ‘If we need somewhere to stick sausages, or someone to flay for blood pudding, I can see the point of you. But short of that you're just a nuisance.’ Reek shook and scraped at his scalp while Batilda carried on talking. ‘You stink, and it’s hard enough tryna keep the kitchens clean. And you an’t stopped scratching since you came down here. An’t you got owt to say for yoursen?’

But he hadn’t. And he just looked at the floor and wished he were back in his Master’s chambers, waiting.

She made another dismissive sound of disgust, and turned away, calling, ‘Emerlee!’

‘Yes, cook?’ a voice called back from somewhere in the busy throng preparing supper.

‘Get over here, I have a new task for ya.’

A buxom young woman came rushing over. Face and loose grey dress covered in flour, her long, mousy brown hair hung limp in the heat from the ovens. She gave the cook a very half-hearted curtsy and said, ‘I an’t finished kneading the bread.’

‘I’ll do it. I have a worse job for ya. Take this thing,’ she nodded to Reek, ‘and make him fit to be around.’

Reek glanced up and for a moment his eyes locked with warm brown ones, before he looked back down.

‘How am I meant to do that?’ Emerlee asked, the uncertainty obvious in her voice.

‘I really don’t care.’

‘Come on,’ Emerlee said with a sigh as she grabbed Reek’s arm.

‘I’m not supposed to let –’ he started to say, trying not to move, but she just pulled harder till he followed.

She took him to the scullery next to the kitchen, away from hustle and bustle. He was glad of the quiet, but, ‘Master wouldn’t want me to let –’

‘Well, he’s not here is he?’ she answered, pushing him into a plain wooden chair. ‘What’s your name?’

‘You – you don’t know who I am?’

‘I an’t been here long. I mean, I’ve heard rumours…’ she said, filling a jug with water from the bucket in the corner.

‘My name is Reek. Reek – it rhymes with Freak.’

‘Don’t you have any other name?’

‘No,’ he answered, voice quiet but firm.

‘Then Reek it is. It’s nice to meet ya…’

He fidgeted, not sure what to do, what to say. His Master never expected him to make small talk. ‘Where are you from?’ he settled on eventually, hesitantly, while she draped an old rag around his shoulders.

‘A village you won’t have heard off, Bight, it’s on the banks of the Last River, north of here. I had to get away – it’s a long story – so here I am.’ She pulled a comb from the pocket of her apron. Carved from bone, some of its teeth were missing, but to Reek it still looked terrifying.

‘I can’t,’ he said, getting up from his seat, but she pushed him back down into it.

‘Don’t be such a baby. I’ve done this plenty of times before. I had a lot of brothers and sisters, and I’ve been in service since I was a child at whatever “noble” house would take me. Now just sit still.’

‘Master won’t like it,’ Reek said, trying to get up again.

‘Why not?’

‘He likes me exactly as I am.’

Standing behind him, she put both hands on his shoulders. ‘Will he really be happy if he catches them from you? How about we just get rid of the lice? And leave everything else.’

Reek stilled. Mustn’t make Master angry, he told himself. He nodded, saying, ‘But just the lice.’

He sat as still as he could while she wrestled to get the knots out of his hair. Sharp pain as she tugged bits of it free, but he was far past the point where something so minor bothered him. She then soaked his hair with anaril oil, the herby smell of it filling the room, and wrapped it in the rag. It stung, but he knew to say nothing when something hurt.

‘Do you want something to eat while we wait?’

He shook his head.

‘Are you certain? I could feel your ribs through your tunic.’

Reek twitched as he shook his head.

‘What happened to you? What happened to your fingers?’ she asked.

Reek looked down at his hands, blood from his scalp under the ragged nails on the fingers he had left.

‘Degore,’ she carried on, ‘who brings the milk, said you got flayed – what does that mean?’

Reek pulling at his ragged tunic, the faded black of it. It was patched together and fraying, but was all he had. It was an old one of his Master’s, and he’d told Reek if anything happened to it, he wouldn’t be allowed to wear clothes anymore and everyone would see the shame of his naked body. ‘It means – it means he took… took bits of me… skinned bits of me…’

She sucked in a breath, a still presence behind him. ‘Lord Snow did that? Like on those ugly banners they have everywhere here? The skinned man? Is that what they mean? But how would you even survive that?’

‘I didn’t,’ Reek mumbled. ‘But Master,’ he added, ‘Master had Maester Wolkan tend to me. Told him if I died he would flay him too. Kept a close eye on me.’ He felt the flutter of almost-pride in his chest that his Master had thought him worth keeping alive. ‘Told me,’ his quiet, hesitant voice dropped to a whisper, ‘told me that if I dared die without his permission, he’d follow me through the forests, through the oceans, through the seven hells and find me…’ Shaking more he got to his feet and limped out of the room as fast as he could. The foot that had been screwed to the ground always hurt more when he thought back to that time. The time when he was born in the castle dungeons.

‘Wait, I an’t –!’  Emerlee called after him. But Reek didn’t stop. Didn’t stop until he reached the courtyard, ripped off the rag, stuck his head under the pump that supplied water from the well, and wrenched the handle. Icy cold water hit his head and trickled down his back beneath his tunic.

Panic stricken, he collected a handful of dusty mud and rubbed it into his hair. Then went and found a dark corner and squatted down, sobbed as urine dribbled from the slit in his stump while he shitted out the last ration of what little food his Master had left him. It still hurt, back there, and he worried he’d shit out his guts and have to face his Master in some foreign God’s hell.

~X~

‘Do you want to hear what I did?! _Do you!?_ ’ His Master gripped Reek’s chin tightly in his hand, looming over him. The look in his eyes was so focussed, so intense, Reek couldn’t bear to look directly at him, knew he'd be pulled under into their icy depths.

He was bent back over the trunk at the end of his Master’s bed. His Master’s arrival back from his battle had been like a storm, raging over him. Reek hadn’t been able to even catch his breath.

Still splattered with dried blood, his Master bore down on him. ‘Do you want to know?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer that would make no difference. ‘I hacked Jon Snow with my sword till his head came clean off his body, then I skinned him. My men are hanging his hide in the trophy room next to Robb Stark’s head.’ His breath against Reek’s cheek was as hot as the sea on a rare summer’s day. Though Reek had never seen the sea, so he must have felt it in a dream. ‘Have you nothing to say, pet?’

He had the grin of a shark, all teeth, his eyes glowing with elated pride. And he was hard against Reek’s thigh.

The terror of what could possibly be the right words to say seized Reek. Seized him with the chant _it’s a trick it’s a trick it’s a trick._ That whatever he said would be wrong.

But that was the point of the trick, he realised. Whatever he said would be right, for his Master, because it would lead to the same inevitable conclusion. And Reek sank into it and let the waters consume him.

‘You scored a great victory, my Lord.’

‘Great?! _Great?!_ That’s all you have to say? They will be cursing my name for a thousand years!’ he raved, dragging Reek to the floor by his hair.

Reek cowered there, watching his Master rip off the last of his armour. It clattered to the floor and Reek held his hands over his ears, could still hear his own tiny grunts and groans of fear.

Everything moved too fast and Reek kept his eyes screwed closed while his Master took him on all fours, pounded into him, hard and fast, his arm held around Reek’s throat. ‘ _My bitch_ ,’ he growled into Reek’s ear while he took him, ‘ _I will kill everyone you ever loved so all you have left is me._ ’

And through the pain, Reek didn’t really believe there had ever been anyone in the world other than his Master.

~X~

Reek lurked behind his Master in the great hall. Almost doubled over, he so badly wanted to disappear, he twitched and shook, quiet distressed sounds he couldn't contain vibrating from his throat. He wished he would go back to his Master’s chambers and wait for him there. The room was full of knights, soldiers, warriors, big hard men with stains of blood on their hands no tide would ever wash clean.

‘What is your creature doing here?’ Roose Bolton asked with an annoyed sigh.

‘I want him to hear how we’re slaughtering the Starks, and what we’ll do to the Greyjoy’s; the Lannister’s; and that dragon bitch when I find her; _all_ of them.’

‘He’s a Greyjoy too. Was a Greyjoy, anyway. He will have to be put down with the rest of them. We can’t have any heirs left out there.’

Reek’s Master straightened his back, his smile slipping into a scowl. ‘No one touches him but me.’

‘Yes, I know all too well what it is you do to him.’

Reek’s Lord visibly ground his teeth. He always looked different around his father. Petulant as a child. His stocky frame smaller. Usually he looked like he could hold the whole world in his hands. But around his father he seemed almost mortal. And, just for a moment, Reek could tell that he and his Master were the same height, the same age. That his Master was just another young man. But only for a moment. ‘No one touches him but me,’ Ramsay said again, glaring at his father.

One of the other lords cleared his throat, and they were drawn back to the table covered in a model of the North, House Bolton represented by small wooden replicas of the flayed man from their banner. Gruesome sinews and bones carved from wood. Reek shivered looking at them and hid behind his Master.

He wasn’t quite sure there really was a world outside the walls of the Dreadfort, the Boltons’ ancestral seat and the only place Reek could truly remember. It was easier to see this as a game, to watch the men play with their wooden toys while he waited for his Master to take him back to his chambers.

~X~

A few uneasy weeks had passed since his Master’s return, the atmosphere in the castle unsettled as they awaited the next campaign. Reek, as always at his Master’s side, watched his Master observe Emerlee across the wide expanse of the courtyard. She was talking to one of the castle guards, kept looking down with a demureness that didn’t appear quite real. Her hand fluttered over her breasts, obvious even under the harsh dress of a scullery maid.

And Reek knew the look on his Master’s face. Knew that twist of his lip, the joyous glint in his eyes, hard and sharp as Valyrian steel. A hunter spotting new prey.

‘Master?’ Reek said, cringing but forcing himself to hold his ground.

‘What?’ the annoyed impatience in his Master’s tone cut Reek like a knife.

‘I – I–’

‘ _What?_ ’

His Master rounded on him, turning his back to Emerlee. And Reek almost sighed in relief, even as he shook, even as the tears of terror started to fall. Though he couldn’t have said where the line fell between protectiveness and possessiveness even if he’d tried.

‘There is – there is something I must tell you, my Lord.’

‘What could you possibly have to say that I’d want to hear?’

‘When – when the garrison were here, after the last battle, one of the soldiers, he…’

And the world shrank to the curl of his Master’s lip as he stepped close.

‘He _what_ Reek?’

‘He – he –’

And his Master was only an inch from him, leaning close to take in his scent with a low growl.

‘I’m sorry Master – I didn’t mean to – I – and he – I –’

Warmth spread down Reek’s legs as his bladder buckled under the stress, and the bitter stench of urine filled the air. After Reek’s Master took his manhood, the maester had cauterized the wound, and pushed a reed into the slit to keep it open so Reek would be able to urinate once it was pulled out. Then waited, waited for days to see if Reek would live. It was a dream-like time Reek tried not to think about. A time of death and birth, of being ripped screaming in and out of this world and not wanting to be here. Yet here he was.

‘Filthy pup,’ his Master sneered, grabbing his arm and dragging him into the castle.

Gasping and muttering, the servants and soldiers milling around skittered out of their way. And overhead, the reluctant sun burnt through the sky as rain started to fall, the air heavy under the weight of the grey clouds.

His Master dragged him down the long corridor that ran the length of the castle, the floor littered with the colours of the stained glass in the small, arched windows. A splash of red across the flagstones.

He flung Reek into his chambers, sent him sprawling across the floor, and locked the door behind them.

His Master stalked towards him. ‘What is it you wanted to tell me, pet? You do know I would never hurt you?’ he said, even as he slid his filigree silver flaying knife from its holster on his hip. The slender blade, thin enough to separate layers of flesh, glinted and made a whooshing noise as it sliced the air.

‘Yes, Master,’ Reek gasped out through the tight pain of his throat as it contracted in terror. He swallowed and swallowed, the sound of it too loud in his head, but it just closed more.

‘So tell me.’ His Master towered over him.

‘I – he – I’m sorry, my Lord, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m –’

And he kept repeating it, repeating it as his Master cut away his clothes, slicing his skin beneath as he went. He grasped the strip of tattered material he kept tied around Reek’s neck, like a collar, like a noose, wrapped it around his hand and pulled it tight.

‘ _Tell me what he did to you?_ ’ The sliver of blade worked its way down Reek’s chest over his patchwork of scars. At first he felt nothing, then the pain snaked along following the trail as his skin parted, his flesh as pale as uncooked chicken, before blood seeped to the surface. ‘ _Tell me what he did!’_

Reek tried to work out the right answer.

But there was never a right answer, he knew that.

‘Please, Master…’

‘You don’t really need this, do you?’ He grinned down at Reek and, too quick to see anything but a flash of silver and a splash of red, he skimmed the blade flat across Reek’s chest and it slid beneath his nipple.

And the shock of it hit Reek, it was always a relief when his body protected him with a sense of unreality, as his Master scooped the separated nub of flesh into his mouth with his tongue and chewed. Lowering his mouth, he groaned as he lapped at Reek’s open wound. ‘Don’t stop talking,’ he said, rising up briefly, lips smeared with blood. With a guttural growl he lowered his mouth, and again Reek felt like his flesh was being pulled out of his body. The knife dug against Reek’s side as his Master gripped onto him.

‘I –’ Reek started, but his Master broke off for a second to chew, like it was tough gristle, and it hit Reek how this would end. His Master would carve bits off him and eat them till there was nothing left. He wondered which was the last part he would consume? Probably Reek’s heart, as it gave its last beat.

‘Tell me or I’ll take the other one,’ his Master commanded, before he went back to suckling, all tongue and teeth.

‘He _took_ me,’ Reek said, and even to himself his voice sounded small and distant. ‘He made me – I didn’t want to. I belong to – _ah_ – to you, Master.’

There was a satisfied hum as his Master sucked, the blood brimming over his lips and coursing down over the litany of scars covering Reek’s ribs, raised lines in red and white. ‘Just him, or all of them? The whole garrison?’ he paused long enough to ask.

Reek fell into the scarlet tide and cradled his Master’s head to his chest, the stumps of his fingers, and the few whole ones he had left, tangling into the blackness of his hair. ‘All of them, Master. They all had me. Called me The Bastard’s Bitch.’

Reek wondered if he could die like this. Just a few more inches of the blade. There was a certain horrific peace to it, being swept along in his Master’s passion and rage.

Surging up against him, his Master grabbed him by the hair, brought their faces close. Red spittle hit Reek’s lips as his Master ground out. ‘You’re such a fucking _whore_. Never even had a man before me and now anyone can have you.’ He ran the length of the blade down Reek’s chest and he felt the whisper of the touch then the scream of his flesh as it fell open. ‘Did some take your mouth while others took turns with your arse? Spit-roast you like a _pig?_ ’

‘Yes, Master,’ Reek managed to gasp out, sinking, sinking, sinking into the release of the pain. He pushed his hands between them and fumbled at his Master’s britches, trying to grasp them, pull them open.

His Master hissed as Reek pulled him free. Hard and leaking he pushed against the wrinkled flesh of Reek’s crotch, the scarred plains of it. ‘I should give you to the castle guards, watch them all take you,’ he gasped as his balls nestled against Reek’s, still rutting against the hollowed, scarred flesh of Reek’s belly. ‘Let everyone have you, fuck you till there’s nothing left. _Fuck_.’

He lay between Reek’s legs, hard thrusts against him, fingers running over Reek’s scars, until his body went rigid and Reek felt more spurts of wetness joining his blood coating their bodies.

His Master laughed, letting the flaying knife finally clatter to the floor. He lay with his head on Reek’s chest – raw, open flesh under his cheek. But these were the only times he was still and silent, and Reek couldn’t see him scheming. The waters, just for a brief moment, tranquil.

‘I know what you did,’ his Master said against his chest, the words wet with blood. ‘Remember: the naked have few secrets, the flayed have _none_ , and you’re both for me. You’re whatever I want you to be.’

‘Master?’

‘I know you lied to me because I looked at that maid cunt. Jealous little thing. She’s a servant, but you’re a _slave_.’ His fingers splaying against Reek’s throat. A light touch like the foam of the sea with the devastation of the tide beneath it. ‘If you ever lie to me again I’ll cut out your tongue. And have the garrison take turns raping _her_ , then have my hounds hunt her down when she runs and let them eat her. And you know that if you do _ever_ let anyone else touch you,’ his jaw clenched, ‘I’ll skin you alive. Cut off your arms, your legs, poke out your eyes, puncture your eardrums, keep you in a trunk. You couldn’t even beg for death.’

Reek felt the chill of the sea in winter as he drifted among the ice.

‘Yes, my Lord.’

~X~

Reek's Master was away on another campaign, had been gone days. Reek had watched him leave from the tower window overlooking the courtyard. It was just an opening in the stone, with a seat built into the wall. He’d sat there feeling like a lady in one of the paintings in the great hall, who waited for her knight and pined away. He would pine away if his Master didn’t return. He had looked so gallant on his white stallion with his cape spread out behind him. And what was the harm in pretending?

He’d wanted to go down and watch them leave, catch a glimpse of the rumoured world beyond the gates. But his Master’s father was becoming increasingly intolerant of Reek’s presence, and his Master had told him to stay out of the way.

So he lay curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace in his Master’s chambers, as a treat to himself, the sky black beyond the windows and littered with icy stars.

He pulled his tunic around himself, every bit of it patched together with messy stitches he could barely manage anymore, and stiff with blood.

He was drifting away when something landed on his chest and he sat bolt upright. It slid to his lap.

‘Master? Master I’m s–sorry! I was –’

‘ _Shhh_ , pet. I brought you a gift.’ Still flushed and bright with accomplishment, his Master knelt at his side. He nodded his head towards Reek’s lap, and Reek haltingly picked up what lay there.

A doll.

A doll with woollen hair and a flowered cotton dress.

Reek looked back up at his Master, lit red in the flickering glow of the flames.

‘I found the Stark bitches.’ Reek noticed the splatters of blood on his Master’s cheek. ‘One of them was clutching at that like she was still a baby – it’s yours now. I told you, you have no one but me.’

Reek held the doll to his chest.

‘Do you remember? Before you were, well, you?’

Reek shook his head.

‘You were always a prisoner, a hostage, a _pet_. I knew it the first moment I laid eyes on you. You were born for this. Theon was their prisoner, the Starks. His father gave him like a whore to Ned _fucking_ Stark at Winterfell when he was a snivelling little runt. But Ned lost his head at King’s Landing, and my father stuck a knife in his son Robb’s chest, then slit Ned’s wife’s throat. I put arrows through his crippled son, and I forget how many others… and skinned his bastard. And now I butchered his little girls. And I flayed Theon till he was dead and just left behind his ghost. They’re all gone. Do you know how lucky you are to be here with me?’

‘Yes, Master,’ Reek whispered, numb as he disappeared under the roar of the waves.

Fingers splayed against Reek’s throat his Master hummed his approval. ‘My cunt of a father is waiting with the other Lords in the great hall. I’ll return to you after the council meeting.’ He rose and grabbed the silver dish of lard, dropping it onto the rug beside Reek. ‘Get yourself ready for when I return, or I’ll rip you open and make you _bleed_.’

‘Yes, Master,’ he managed to whisper as his Master walked away and the waves receded.

He curled up on the floor hugging the doll to his chest, and watched the flames dance.

~X~

‘Have you heard?’ Emerlee asked, falling into step beside Reek as he made his way back across the courtyard towards the doors of the Dreadfort. They loomed before him, twice his height. He’d come outside to empty his Master’s chamber pot into the cesspool, and held it to his chest, arms wrapped around it while he trudged through the hoof-printed mud that pulled at his feet. He didn’t like going outside the castle, but his Master said it didn’t matter now, that Reek had an invisible collar and lead tying him to his Master’s side. And he was right, Reek could feel it.

Shaking his head, he kept his eyes trained on the ground.

‘The Lord is taking a wife!’ she carried on. ‘We’ll _finally_ have a Lady around here. A crow took a message to her father – at house Bey, or Frey, or summat. The scribe who wrote it told the stable master, he told the cook, and now it’s spreading around the kitchens like wildfire.’

Unable to even breathe, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Emerlee stayed well back. Reek couldn’t control his bowels anymore, as well as his bladder, and the stench kept most people away – which he was glad of. But she reached across and touched his arm. Twitching, Reek shrugged her off.

‘My Master is taking a wife?’ he whispered. _What about me, what about me, what about me,_ the litany repeated over and over in his head.

‘No! Not Lord Snow, not Ramsay,’ she insisted, shaking her head. ‘His father Roose – Lord Bolton, I mean. I’m sorry, Reek, I din’t mean to –’

But Reek was already shuffling away into the castle. His Master would not be pleased to have a stepmother, and Reek should be there to comfort him. To offer his body as a distraction. The dead weight of it settled in his guts, but he tingled in anticipation.

In the distance he could hear yelling, then a door slammed. He passed Lord Roose Bolton in the hall. Glancing up, Reek caught sight of the scowl his Master’s father directed at him, the light from the windows giving him more colour than he usually had, before Reek looked resolutely back at the floor.

He slunk into his Master’s chambers and found him looking out a window, his back rigid.

It all happened so fast, his Master turning on him, the chamber pot smashing against the wall and Reek ending up cowering against the wall while his Master laid into him, fists and boots and Reek mumbling apologies and pleas.

The blows were such a common occurrence, he barely even registered the dull thuds of pain, until he gave a sharp cry when his Master landed a particularly vicious kick and one of Reek’s remaining fingers bent back with a snap.

His Master fell to his knees panting. ‘What is it, pet?’ He prodded at Reek’s finger, while Reek whimpered. ‘Shall I flay it? Peel off the skin? Wait for you to beg me to cut it off?’

Reek cradled his hand to his chest. ‘But – but Master, when I, when I have no fingers left, I will be of no use to you.’

‘All I need you to be is a hole. An assortment of holes. Your mouth, your arse: shall I make the slit you piss through big enough to take my prick too? Make it into a proper cunt? Give you a pretty dress to wear like the whore you are?’ He pulled Reek’s feet and Reek landed on his back, his head hitting the flagstones with a thud.

He stared up at the ceiling, more stone, everywhere stone, cold and harsh. ‘I’m yours to do with as you wish, Master,’ he answered, knowing the begging would start soon and then he would lose his words, lose his mind. His finger throbbed and it was all he could feel. And his world, already shrunken to the size of the Dreadfort, shrank even further, shrank and shrank until it was the size of what would be the second finger of his right hand, had the pinkie not been flayed and cut off long ago.

Ramsay pulled off the rags Reek wore day and night, the only ones he had, while Reek kept muttering.

‘Reek, my name is Reek. Reek, it rhymes with – rhymes with…’

‘ _Shriek._ ’ 

His Masters blunt fingers were inside him now, shoved into the filthy, shit encrusted hole that Reek’s world had come to revolve around. And he just sobbed quietly as his Master worked him. Fingers pushing, searching, _rubbing_ , looking for the nub he’d found that made Reek come apart, thumb wedged against Reek’s balls. He’d laughed like a child the first time he’d made Reek climax. Said he liked the challenge.

And as Reek’s hips bucked, and his hand throbbed, all he felt was exposed. But his Master was leaning over him, shoving his fingers inside, biting down on Reek’s throat, his chest, teeth sinking in and tearing flesh till Reek gasped and bucked. ‘ _I’m s–so s–sorry, Master_ ,’ he slurred out, voice high-pitched in fear. If his Master killed him, there would be no one left to care for him. Reek would never say it, would lose his tongue if he did, but no one else cared for his Master, not even his father. Especially not his father.

‘What did you say, pet? You said something about my father?’

‘What? No, my Lord! N–n–nothing, my Lord.’

And as Reek shook, his Master's fingers coaxing moans out of him, his Master talked, never allowed silence.

‘Did I ever tell you about my mother? I didn’t know her. My father had her worked to death when I was still a baby. _Ah_ – yes,’ he said, as Reek gasped and contracted around him, spreading his legs wide and pushing himself down on his Master’s fingers, his feet braced against the cold floor. ‘She was a peasant, married some other _peasant_ , a miller I think, or a shepherd – it doesn’t matter.’ He grinned and pushed up harder inside Reek as he mewled, his whole body shaking. ‘My father owned her, owns all the scum on his land. He raped her beneath the tree he’d hanged her husband from – beneath his swaying body. She must have looked up and watched it as I was conceived, its death juices dripping down as it pissed and shit itself.’ He paused, his eyes losing their focus for once, looking into the past.

Reek wrapped his legs around his Master’s hips. ‘ _Please_ ,’ he mumbled, lost, but it felt good, Gods help him, it felt good. It was stronger than the pain, the weight he felt spreading out to his ruined groin, his slit sticky the way his Master’s prick got when he became excited, but his Master said Reek got dripping wet like a girl’s cunt. And Reek’s balls ached so much, all the time, ached with a desperate need and he couldn’t – _couldn’t_ make it stop. And he felt a tingle of fear that his Master might pull away, might leave him like this as he had many times before. ‘Please,’ he whispered, trying to put on a good show, ‘ _please._ ’

And, dragged back to the present, his Master laughed. ‘Such a slut, such a whore, such a crying _woman_ ,’ he said, his fingers prodding and poking and scratching inside Reek, finding the part of him that felt good and working it over over over, harder and harder, till it felt like being battered inside but still it felt _good_. The heat and pressure of it, dragging at him. ‘She was like you I suppose, just a hole to be fucked. I wonder if she begged for it too, in the end?’

And when, finally, Reek shuddered and keened, his tiny, swollen stump trickling out streams of white that dripped down over his balls, his Master laughed, sounding gleeful, sounding distracted from his worries. And as Reek lay there in the cold and shook, he was glad to have given him that, at least. A moment’s peace.

‘Filthy little bitch,’ Ramsay sneered down at him with a curve of his lips, and he wiped his shit-covered fingers down Reek’s chest and abdomen, smearing him with his own stench.

Reek was too out of it to care much as his Master grabbed him by his hair and dragged him to the hook he had hanging from the high ceiling, hoisted up Reek’s insubstantial body and suspended him there by a rope around his wrists, mangled feet scrabbling at the ground.

Reek’s body was buffered back and forth as by waves while his Master whipped him, long, deep strokes, until he forgot his broken finger, forget everything else, swept away in the rhythm of the burning stripes of pain embedded into his back.

And afterwards, when his Master took him, and he felt the pulse of his seed inside of him, his Master’s roar in his ear, he was too full up and too emptied out to feel anything anymore, and the world slipped away into welcome oblivion.

~X~

‘Did I tell you, pet? I’m a Bolton now, not a Snow. King Tommen naturalised me by royal decree. They say he’s really a bastard too, but what does it matter? Bastards rule the world. And while I was gone, I visited the Iron Islands, such a _lovely_ place. There’s fuck all there but shit-stained rocks and misery. Anyway, I cut off Theon’s father’s head and mounted it on the bridge outside Pyke.’ His grin was as bright as the light shining from his eyes. ‘They say the Greyjoys used to rule the sea itself, are descended from merfolk, but he was just a decrepit old man full of disgust when I told him what his “son” is now. I think he was grateful to die and escape the shame.’

Wrists tied to the pillars of the bed, arse in the air, cheek pressed to the mattress, Reek screwed his eyes shut. There was a candle lodged inside him, to keep him open until his Master was hard and could take him again. He had said he might leave it in even then, had said that, after all, Reek could never be full enough. He’d only just returned, but Reek had been waiting, waiting, waiting.

Kneeling beside him, hand skimming over the scars on Reeks back, his Master continued: ‘Then I raped Theon’s sister and slit her throat. How do you feel about that, pet?’

‘My name is Reek. I have no family,’ Reek mumbled into the white cotton sheet, digging the nails of his remaining fingers into his palms. He had one less finger now, it had never healed from being broken, had stuck out at an unnatural angle, swollen and festering. He’d begged for it to be taken in the end. And his Master had. Slowly. Bit by bit.

‘That’s right, no family but me. I suppose you’re my salt wife. That’s what they call them there. Whores like you. Slags who are just there to be fucked and aren’t fit to be around polite society. You should be proud to be mine. Even the Lannister’s are afraid of me. And they’re right to be, pet. I’ll go after them next, for the glory of my _beloved_ father, Warden of the _fucking_ North. You remember the Lannisters? They’re head of Westeros, the Seven Kingdoms. For now.’ As was often the case, the bitter sarcasm of his Master’s words poured over Reek and seeped down to his bones.

‘But you don’t need anyone but me, do you pet?’ his Master asked, with a sharp, hard smack to Reek’s arse cheek, already bruised black. His hole contracted, starting to push out the candle, softened and bending from his body’s warmth, and his Master shoved it back inside as Reek gasped and whimpered.

‘No, my Lord,’ he managed to slur out, and the certainty of it filled him up, the salty tide of it washing into all the hollowed out coves and caverns inside of him and filling them till they flooded and there was nothing left but the sea.

~X~

His Master was away again. Had ridden off with what looked like whole legions of soldiers. And there was a baby crying in the castle, which seemed strange, new life in a place that Reek thought of as his prison and his tomb but would never be able to leave. They’d have to drag him out and even then he’d come back, bang on the gates till his hands bled, begging for his Master to let him in. The Outside World sounded too big, too intimidating, he needed an anchor, even one pierced through his chest, or he would just drift endlessly away.

They still made him work in the kitchens each time his Master was gone, made him fetch water and take out the vegetable peelings and bones. Wouldn’t let him near anything too clean or delicate.

They’d just sent him up the thin, stone staircase to the back of the Dreadfort, and out past the stables to the rubbish heap. The panic was rising up in him, the unrestrained enormity of being Outside, even with more stone walls hemming him in.

He was turning to go back Inside as quickly as he could, when he caught site of Emerlee over by the watchtower. She was talking with one of the castle guards Reek had seen her with before. There was something coquettish about the way she held her hand over her breasts and gazed up at him through her lashes. And something stirred in Reek, a vague memory of being on the other side of that look, of girls, soft and willing. But he pushed it away.

He was Reek, he always had been and always would be. Whatever lay behind him, there was no way back even if he wanted to. And he didn’t. His Master said the dead-him had been a coward and a fool with no loyalties, had done bad things and was better forgotten. Besides, Reek had seen enough to know that each life was just a different game, and he may as well play this one to its conclusion.

Emerlee looked up and caught him staring, their eyes locking for a brief moment. Twitching, Reek looked hurriedly at the ground and started to head inside.

‘Walda had a baby!’ Emerlee said, catching up with Reek as he entered the welcome shadows of the castle. ‘Lord Bolton’s wife – Roose Bolton, I mean, not your Lord Bolton. Did Ramsay tell you?’

‘ _Lord Bolton – mustn’t call my Master Ramsay, never Ramsay,_ ’ Reek mumbled.

‘What?’

Reek just shook his head.

‘Are you going back to the kitchen?’

‘No – no I can go back to my Master’s chambers now and wait.’

‘Do you know when he’s coming back?’

Reek shook his head again. ‘But he’ll come back. He’ll always come back.’

‘Do you want him to?’ she asked, dropping her voice.

Reek just nodded, quick and frantic. The walls had eyes and ears and teeth.

She put her hand on his arm and pulled him into a stone alcove. He cringed back against the wall.

‘No one’s allowed to touch me but my Master,’ he mumbled, rubbing at his scarred cheek with his rag-wrapped hand.

‘I’m learning everything that goes on here, and what I don’t see, others tell me. There are no secrets here. Our _Masters_ , they think we don’t know, don’t understand, but we do. I know now, who you _were_.’

‘I know who I _am_. I have always been Reek, and I always will be, till I’m rotting in the –’

‘I don’t have time for the games you play!’ her voice rising, she stepped closer, and Reek cowered back against the wall.

Sighing, she pushed back the long, lank strips of hair that had come loose from her messy bun. ‘I know – I know that things between you and the young lord are… complicated… but I want to tell you something. You have to _promise_ not to tell him though.’

Reek kept his eyes trained on the flagstones and shook his head furiously as he twitched.

But Emerlee just kept talking. ‘Adney – the guard I was just talking to – we’ve been seeing a lot of each other, and he warned me to hide on night of the first full moon after the Lords return. You should hide too, then sneak away. Everyone will be busy tending to other matters, and there will be ways out. You can escape, find somewhere you can be happy… Promise me you’ll try?’

Keeping his gaze trained on the floor, Reek muttered, ‘Master knows everything,’ and flinched when Emerlee sighed and squeezed his arm before she ran off, her skirts flurrying.

Reek kept muttering how his Master sees everything, hears everything, knows everything, as he made his way back to his Master’s chambers. Once there, he curled up on the floor by the bed, and awaited his Master’s return, whenever that may be.

~X~

And Reek waited, and waited. As the days passed he became more and more jittery. He stopped going to the kitchen, and when they tried to drag him out of his Master’s chambers he clung on to the door frame and sobbed until they gave up. One of the servants trying to pull him away spat on him, called him a ‘Filthy cunt,’ said ‘You deserve everything the Bastard does to ya, we’re not taking the blame for you being lazy,’ but it didn’t matter.

He curled up on the floor, without food or water, and pined as the sun slid in and out of view through the thick, blurry glass of the small arched windows.

The dawn sky was still streaked the colour of blood, when a commotion woke him. Just for a second he felt a warm, hard length between his legs, but when he reached down there was nothing there. He struggled to his feet, stiff and aching from the cold, hard stone floor.

He staggering to a window, fumbled with the latch and managed to force it open. The red heavens were filled with the shadow of a murder of crows flying East with news. Though where could they even be going? He didn’t really believe there was anything beyond the walls. Everything just stopped and faded away where the Dreadfort ended. Only the Weeping Water glistened reflected scarlet beyond, just the end of a world that fell away to nothing.

But looking down into the courtyard, there was a hoard of people, and horses: and his Master!

He rushed out of the chambers, limping down the corridor, out into the crimson glow of dawn. Summer had lasted many years, but it was finally autumn, and the frost glittering on the ground soaked into the rags wrapped around his feet.

Lord Roose Bolton strode past him into the castle, while Reek’s Master tumbled from his horse with a groan and was carried inside. Reek stood, watching, frozen in place, murmuring, ‘ _Master?_ ’ under his breath.

He scurried after them until they reached his Master’s chambers. Outside the door slammed in his face he was held back by his Master’s squire, Athelard, a mean, gangly youth who barely tolerated Reek’s presence at the best of times.

‘He’d want me with him,’ Reek muttered, hobbling back and forth outside his Master’s quarters, tugging at his hair and daring glances up at the guards.

While the others ignored him, one looked at him with disgust, his nose wrinkling as Reek drew near. Reek was so used to the way he looked, the way he smelt, he sometimes forgot, but in moments like this is hit him like a tidal wave.

‘Our Lord was injured in battle,’ the guard said,’ he dun’t need the likes of you stinking up his chambers.’

And Reek shrunk back, sliding down the wall to the floor and hugging his knees to his chest.

And again, he waited. He always seemed to be waiting. Watched as people came in and out of the massive, ornate, carved oak door.

‘Reek,’ Maester Wolkan said with a nod of his head as he passed, going into the chambers. He could never quite look at Reek, and again his eyes skittered away when Reek glanced up.

‘He would want me there,’ Reek whispered to the guards boots.

Servants passed him carrying bowls filled with bandages and bloody water. ‘It looked bad,’ one of them whispered to another, and Reek’s breath caught in his chest.

What would happen to him if his Master were gone? There’d be no one left to protect him. If he were lucky he’d end up in a brothel being fucked day and night by those perverted enough to want him. He didn’t know how to do anything else. He’d be at everyone’s mercy and they’d all have him, do worse things to him than his Master ever had. His Master told him that all the time, and Reek knew it was true. And the sellswords that passed through the castle on their way to do mysterious errands for his Master, they looked at Reek with disgust, but with something else too. With lust. Dared snatch at his body until his Master growled at them. They muttered how Reek must know ‘secret ways to pleasure a man.’ And he did, he did. He knew far too much to be cast adrift on his own.

Eventually, the bustle dispersed, and Reek slipped inside the darkened room, the heavy velvet curtains closed.

His Master lay in his massive bed, pale as the sheet covering him. Always clean shaven, usually by Reek, dark stubble had emerged to cover his chin and over his lip. His well-muscled arms were bare, bandages wrapped around his thick chest. Reek’s few remaining fingers twitched, aching to reach out and touch, but he didn’t dare.

‘Reek?’ his Master asked, briefly prying open his eyes. ‘I’ve heard Dothraki wives are burnt on the pyre when their husbands die. I expect – _ah_ – I expect no less of you. Athelard will have you thrown on if you waver. And I will find you in the next life.’ A satisfied smile spread across his lips.

‘Yes, Master,’ Reek whispered, the thought of being left alone even more terrifying than the thought of not being.

‘Water,’ his Master said, and Reek rushed to the table, hands shaking as he poured it from the silver jug into the goblet, wiping in terror at what he spilt.

He held it to his Master’s chapped lips, terrified he would get the angle wrong and it would overflow, knowing even in this state his Master could wreck him.

‘Did you hear?’

Reek shook his head.

‘Of course: why would anyone tell you? They may as well tell the hounds.’ He smiled again, always a terrifying sight, his lips pulled into a rigor mortis as his eyes glowed with an inner fire it was a relief to still see. ‘We defeated the Lannisters. I put a sword through Jaime Lannister myself. He got in his own thrusts.’ His Master gestured at his chest with a moan that rolled over Reek like the tide.

‘But I had him flayed for it,’ his Master continued, ‘I would have brought you his head, but we mounted the skinned corpses of his whole incestuous house along the battle field in the Riverlands. Jaime, his whore of a sister, the fucking imp. _Everyone_. My father has gone from being the Warden of the North to the conqueror of the Iron Throne. And I hear he has a new heir. A baby brother – how nice.’ He smiled his terrifying smile again, even as the bandages slowly turned red, blossoming along the threads like a poppy.

‘Want a taste?’ his Master asked, pulling at his dressings, pulling them loose, revealing long, deep cuts, the edges puffy with puss. Grabbing Reek by the hair, he pulled his head down, grip almost gentle as he held Reek to him, held him while Reek slid his tongue into a gash, lapping, tasting the red copper of it, along with the smell of freshly butchered cattle.

‘ _Hmmm_ ,’ his Master hummed his approval. ‘I may have to take a sword to you, pet – it feels _good_.’

~X~

Reek’s Master had never been still before. He was as restless as the sea, always in motion, but injured he just lay there and Reek stayed by his side. And, denied movement, his Master talked.

‘Did I ever tell you about the manservant I had as a child? He was almost you, but not quite. He was the sketch, but you’re the masterpiece. My father says I have no imagination, no vision – but look at you. Look at what I made. I was too young to help my servant ripen as you have. But he always _reeked,_ so that’s what we called him. He used to get down on his knees and suck me when I was still too small to mount him. Used to have me slice his flesh with a razor before I even had a beard to shave. My father taught me to flay, but Reek taught me to enjoy it. We used to hunt down peasant girls from the village together, with the hounds. He liked to fuck their corpses. I like my meat still bleeding.’

And he let Reek tend to him, almost vulnerable, almost, basking but still a shark.

‘Did I ever tell you about my mother?’ he asked one day, while Reek cleaned his wounds with filthy hands, picking at them with his few fingers like the beaks of the crows cawing in the gnarled old trees outside the windows.

Reek nodded.

‘So I did. They say Theon’s mother was a lunatic. Perhaps that’s where you inherited it from. Your touch of madness. My mother… my mother was a fucking fool. I wonder if any part of her is in me. My father says he knew I was his when he saw my eyes. What do my eyes look like, Reek?’

And, just for a fleeting moment, for one rise and fall of the tide, he saw sadness in his Master’s eyes. He had never seen that before. Perhaps never would again. But it was there for a moment. The child he had been, or could have been. Then it was swept away, and the glint of the raging ocean in by the glare of the sun was back.

‘What do you see when you look at me, Reek?’ he asked again.

And, caught in the jagged-cut quartz of his Master’s pupils, Reek felt the terror again of games he could never win.

‘I see my Master,’ he mumbled, fumbling with the bandages.

‘As soon as I can get around again, I’ll remind you what that means.’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘When you were captured – _desperate_ to be captured – and I first saw you… except it wasn’t you, was it? When I saw who you were pretending to be, before I had you, before I trained you. I knew. Knew what you could be. Knew you just _begging_ for it. Needed to be reshaped. Freed. Even in your fancy bronze armour you were pretty as a girl, and I turned you into one.’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

And as Reek tended to his Lord one night by candlelight, he grabbed Reek’s hand. Reek tensed, shaking, ready to cry. He needed the few fingers he had left.

But, ‘Who did this to you?’ his Master asked, fingers running over the deep cuts crisscrossing the back of Reek’s hand, his wrist. His Master’s grip tightened, eyes as wild as the sea. ‘ _No one touches you but me_.’

‘I’m sorry – I’m sorry, my Lord. I’m sorry.’ Hot warmth trickled down between Reek’s thighs and the bitter stench filled the air. ‘I – I needed – it calmed – calmed me.’

His Master’s look of anger curved into a smile, eyes glinting in the flicker of the flames. He closed his other hand over Reek’s. Voice soft, cloying, he said, ‘You did it to yourself? What with?’

‘Your razor,’ Reek muttered, thinking of the straight razor with its abalone handle.

‘You know you’re not allowed to touch yourself, to pleasure yourself, you know –’

‘I – I know, my Lord, I’m s–sorry, I – I – I – you were gone – and I didn’t know what to do – I didn’t mean to be bad – I –’

‘ _Shhh_ , pet.’ His nails dug into Reek’s cuts, the blood seeping out again. ‘You missed me. I will, of course, have to punish you. But then, that’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Yes – yes, my Lord.’

~X~

Each night Reek had watched the moon through the windows, watched it grow from a sliver sharp as a flaying blade, till it was half visible and half hidden, and finally almost whole. It gazed down in all its naked glory while clouds wandered idly across and radiated in its glow.

And Reek watched. Watched and knew the next night would be the full moon.

And the next night, sure enough, the moon hung above, ominous and heavy as it lit up the night.

While he’d watched the moon fatten, he’d watched his Master’s bruises pale from purple, to green, to just tender shadows. Watched his wounds turn angry red then knit together into jagged grins. Had kneeled at his Master’s feet while his Master sat in a high backed chair and, smiling but clearly bored, planned sacking King's Landing to purge anyone left loyal to the Lannisters. Reek had tuned out the words, closed his eyes and just felt his Master’s fingers carding as best they could through his wavy, matted hair which had grown almost down to his shoulders.

Had learned to ride his Master’s prick so well that if he really tried, if he angled himself just right, then with his Master’s hand around his throat he could make the white seep out the slit in his stump while his Master told him, ‘Such a good little whore for me, _fuck_ ,’ and in silence Reek preened.

But tonight his Master had been unusually pensive, had stalked off to deal with something and left Reek to his own devices.

So, braving the courtyard, he looked up at the tall, thick stone walls and at the massive wooden gates that stood open, parted down the centre. They were never open. The iron portcullis was raised. And there were no guards.

Behind him, the Dreadfort rose, as enormous as a village encased in impenetrable walls with towers punctuated by cross-shaped crenels to fire arrows through.

Overhead, the full moon bore witness, framed by glowing clouds. The wind buffeted against Reek, threatening to blow him away like a mound of ashes. With it came the smell of the river Reek could see beyond the wall, the clean smell of rushing water, the sound of it rippling against him, washing him clean. And water called to him, the brine, the distant expanse of the sea. The power, the enormity, the endless blue of it.

He could just go.

Walk away.

Set off into the world and see what was out there.

Find out if it was real or if he would fade away to nothing as soon as he stepped over the threshold.

And even if he vanished, would that be such a bad thing?

He was already a shadow. A ghost. Not even a memory.

But everything was off-kilter in the castle, and he been warned, warned _something_ was going to happen.

Something to be hidden from. To run from.

And what about his Master? What if something happened to him?

And anyway, what would he do without Reek?

His Master, his Master, his Master…

Reek turned and shuffled back into the Dreadfort, his lame foot dragging.

The invisible chains tethering him to his Master dragging him forth.

And with each step he remembered. Remembered being brought here to the Dreadfort. Remembered being bound to a cross, remembered the darkness, remembered the pain. Remembered his Master asking, demanding:

What is your name?

What is your name?

_What is your name?_

‘Reek,’ he murmured. And even as the images flitted across his mind like the clouds lit by the moon, he kept taking steps forward, one after another after another through the eerily silent castle.

His Master’s quarters were silent too when he entered them, the fire extinguished.

He jolted when the door slammed shut behind him, his Master standing there, lit by the moonlight pushing through the windows. He was dressed, all in black as was his custom, one with the shadows.

‘Where have you been, pet?’ His Master’s soft voice was soft, hushed, but it still overwhelmed the darkness.

‘I – I went – I just – I,’ Reek gasped out, starting to shake, to rock back and forth.

‘On your knees.’

Reek crumpled to his knees, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. The anticipation was always the worst part. The waiting to see what would happen.

‘Give me your hand.’ Reek raised his trembling hand, not knowing if he would get it back. ‘Do you have something to tell me, Reek?’

He was eye level with his Master’s prick and his flaying blade. He wondered which one he would have to take this night.

‘I was – was warned, Master. To hide tonight. That something would happen. That I could – I could escape…’

‘Do you want to be free?’

Reek looked up into his Master’s eyes, lost in the shadows. ‘No, my Lord.’

‘And who told you?’

Reek hesitated. The grip on his hand tightened till he felt his bones grind together

‘Emerlee,’ he said, quickly. ‘One of the – the scullery maids.’

Already, Reek could feel her blood, wet on his hands.

It wasn’t a surprise when he found himself pressed back onto the flagstones, his Master’s hands around his throat, the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears like the waves, like the sea.

‘ _You didn’t tell me?!_ ’ his Master screamed, spittle hitting Reek’s face as the world faded to red, ‘ _They’re coming for me and you didn’t tell me?!_ ’

The hands tightened, and weakly Reek grasped his Masters wrists, his remaining fingers fumbling and slipping.

‘ _Ungrateful little cunt!_ ’ his Master screamed as the pressure in Reek’s head built and the darkness spread, blotting out his Master’s face.

 _This is it, this is it, this is it_ – Reek thought, as he fell into the roar of the ocean, as he let go, as he went limp. It was a relief, and he was glad, glad to die with his Master’s hands on him. To abdicate his will, to submit, to –

The heat of laughter bubbled against his skin as the pressure receded.

Reek rolled onto his side, coughing and spluttering, grasping at his throat.

‘Don’t you know by now, pet?’ his Master said, the overwhelming shape of him solidifying above Reek as his vision blinked back. ‘I know everything you know; everything you do; everything you feel; everything you _think._ You can’t hide anything from me. You think I didn’t know my _fucking_ father would see me as a threat now? That he’d think I wouldn’t settle for being the hand of the king, and not even his true heir? And he’s right. He’s been plotting, organising, amassing those loyal to him. But I have a surprise for him too. I have my own forces, those who take _pleasure_ in what we do.’

He grabbed Reek’s hair and dragged him across the room, shoved him into the massive, heavy, elaborately carved oak wardrobe and hissed down at him: ‘Don’t move, don’t make a sound. I’ll deal with you later.’

The door slammed shut followed by the sound of the lock turning.

Reek huddled up into as small a mound of flesh and bones as he could manage. It was pitch black and stuffy, but had the reassuring smell of his Master, and his Master’s clothes hanging above brushed against Reek’s forehead.

Silence.

Yelling.

Screams.

Muffled through the wood the shouting and piercing shrieks and agonised wailing of pain filled the tiny space as it got hotter and hotter.

Reek held his hands over his ears.

‘ _This is how it must feel to be dead,_ ’ he dared try whisper, his lips moving but no sound emerging.

So his Master had, of course, been right. Because he was still Reek. Even rotting in the ground. And _what is dead may never die_ , flitted through his mind, but ruthlessly he pushed it away. It sounded like something from another life. It was true though, he was already dead, and his Master would never let him get away by dying again.

‘ _Bastard!_ ’ someone yelled outside Reek’s makeshift coffin, and he heard people ransack the room. He didn’t move, held his breath to stop the pained sounds that always shook out of him. He was good. And then he heard the door slam, felt the vibrations of it.

Hours passed, it must surely have been hours, Reek gasping with each breath, and the screams never stopping.

But then they did. And the silence was worse. The silence meant there was no one left to scream.

And still he waited, waited. Wondering if his Master were dead. Wondering if anyone would ever come back for him, or if some day they’d find him in here, a pile of shattered, disjointed bones. And they would wonder who he had been. ‘Reek,’ he whispered. ‘I’m Reek.’

Time slipped away and so did consciousness. But then the wardrobe doors burst open, and there was his Master, larger than life. The room was filled with dim light, and his Master looked down at him with eyes lit with their own fire, his grin wide, his face covered in splatters and smears of blood, his clothes dishevelled, torn, as though hands had pulled at him as their lives were snuffed out.

‘Good pet, hiding like the coward you are.’ His Master dragged him out by the hair, limbs tingling and numb. He couldn’t get his feet under him, and his Master half carried him through the castle to the courtyard.

Past the soldiers, the guards, the knights, covered in blood and some with bits missing, ears, eyes, but others chatted with flagons of mead in their hands. In the corner, Maester Wolkon, head down as he sawed the shattered remains of a leg off a man who screamed as bone crunched, others Reek vaguely recognised as also being from his Master’s legion holding him down.

His Master flung him to the ground, and he landed in puddles of gore, of blood and guts and teeth and limbs. He looked up and overhead the dawn sky was drenched in crimson, as red as the blood Reek lay in. And all around the massive courtyard bodies hung from the wall. Skinned, their tendons, their muscles glistening.

And in pride of place Roose Bolton’s head topped a spike shoved into the sloppy wet mud, his mouth hanging open, opaque eyes staring at nothing.

His young wife's body, naked, rolls of peeled fat sloughing off it hung from a noose next to him thrown over the top of the wall. And next to her, a baby hung, tiny and limp, its face bruised black. A boy, his tiny genitals as limp as the rest of him. Reek’s mind reeled – his Master’s brother, that must be his Master’s half-brother. Reek had never even known his name.

And the thick, arched gates were shut tight, encased by stone, the portcullis no doubt lowered behind them.

Reek closed his eyes, closed them tight and curled up in the copper stench of blood.

‘No – no, pet, I want you to see, to remember. Remember how my _dear_ father and mother looked after I dealt with them. If you ever even _think_ of leaving me, of hiding anything from me, what I did to those cunts will look like a fucking fairy tale compared to what I’ll do to you.’

He grabbed Reek by the hair and pulled him through the human wreckage, boots squelching as he strode.

‘See!’ his Master yelled through the chatter and laughter and moans of the dying filling the air. ‘You’ll never have _anyone_ but me!’

And Reek looked up to see the skinned body hanging from a hook on the wall above him. Its face a ruin of pulped, naked flesh, its bones showing, its eyes gone. Its eviscerated chest flat, but long brown hair still hanging, blood streaked, from its scalp.

‘ _Emerlee_ ,’ Reek whispered, as blood dripped onto his face.

And the air filled with black plumes of smoke as bodies from the heap were tossed onto the bonfire blazing in the centre of the courtyard. The wood and copses crackled and snapped.

And there were so many bodies. There must be hundreds, just here. Even the children, only recognizable by their size. Soldiers, guards, servants, everyone dead.

Reek closed his eyes, pressed his hands over his ears, didn’t think about the stench of burning meat.

‘No, pet, I want you present, open your fucking eyes and take it all in!’ his Master said with a sweep of his hand around the wreckage, before he dragged Reek back towards the castle, through the great doors.

As they went his Master yelled to a blood-soaked knight, ‘Mobec! Round up any survivors and butcher them! We can always find new scum to take out our shit. And get the men ready to march on King’s Landing at first light tomorrow. I’ll be down in the dungeons _celebrating_.’

‘No, no _please_ , I’ll be, I’ll be good, Master –’ Reek rambled over and over as his Master dragged him through the hallways. His Master didn’t say a word, just pushed Reek, tumbling down the long stone staircase. He landed, a bloody heap at the bottom, pain shooting through him, before he was dragged through more corridors lit by flaming torches along the wall. Through a tall iron door and into the damp, musty dungeon.

The torture chamber where his life began.

The echoey space dominated by a tall wooden frame, a cross on its side, the X that was the Bolton family sigil, where people were tied, were broken, were taken apart and remade, if they survived.

And the Master Interrogator, the torturer, stood silently, wearing his black leather apron like a butcher. Coming over, he hovered behind Reek’s Master, waiting to assist.

‘No – no, Master, please, I’ll be good, I’ll do whatever you want, _anything_ , I’m s–s–sorry, my Lord,’ he started to sob, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m –’

‘ _Shhh_ , pet,’ his Master said, as he dragged Reek up, hand against his heaving chest holding him in place against the cross. Reek screamed as his right arm was lifted in the air. He looked at it in the flickering light; a sharp bone jutted against the skin from the inside, puncturing it. ‘I think m–my arm – my arm is broken.’

A glint of teeth caught the lamplight as his Master smiled. ‘Want me to cut it off?’

Reek shook his head, scrambling up onto his toes.

His Master wrenched his arm higher, shouting, ‘Meverel! Help me get him onto this thing!’ bone scraped against itself and in Reek’s torment the world went black.

~X~

A shock of water hit Reek in the face and he jolted awake. The world cleared into focus, the pain still wrenching, his arms raised, tied to the upper arms of the cross, his ankles bound to the bottom ones, legs spread wide, head slumping forward so his chin dug into his chest.

He blinked water out of his eyes, shook his head, tried to take it all in.

They were alone.

The light from the torches flickered over the walls.

His Master still seemed elated as he prowled around the room.

‘You never looked more perfect than this. You remember this place? I know your memory is… patchy.’

‘Y–yes, Master,’ Reek managed to mumble, but his lips were cracked and his throat dry as sand. How long had he spent down here while his Master moulded him into being: Days? Weeks? Months? Years? And here he was again, always back here. ‘Wa–water?’

If his Master heard him, he didn’t show it. He came close, so close Reek could feel his heat.

‘Are you going to leave me tied here?’ Reek asked in the silence, wondering if the rats would eat him first or he would starve.

His Master touched Reek's throat, the touch light, almost gentle. The look on his face mocking, he spoke as though to a child. ‘Don’t you know by now, pet? I will never,’ he paused as he ran his fingers over Reek’s Adam’s apple, ‘let,’ he ran his fingers down Reek’s hairless chest, ‘you,’ he cupped the ruin of Reek’s crotch, ‘go.’

And he smiled his most ingratiating smile, like this was the most normal thing in the world, like he had taken Reek out to dinner at a tavern and they were eating and drinking by candlelight. And the lamplight flickered, reflected in his Master’s pupils.

‘Tomorrow,’ his Master continued, ‘we leave for King’s Landing. And if you’re very very good, I’ll let you ride on the back of my horse. If you’re not, I’ll drag you behind it.’

‘But – but this is our home.’

‘Your home is wherever I am. And even when you die, when you’re rotting in the ground, I’ll find you. And Theon’s drowned God, and the Gods around here carved into trees like half-wits do for their sweethearts, can all fuck right off. _I_ am your God. Do you love me, Reek?’

Reek sucked in a breath, hissing at the pain from his arm that hung limp above him. But he looked at his Master with adoration, his eyes wide. ‘Of course, my Lord.’

Humming appreciatively, his Master went over to the brazier that Reek hadn’t even noticed, picked up the handle of something sticking out of the flames and poked around in the coals.

‘I’m going to take the Iron Throne,’ he continued, his voice calm, casual. ‘Have you ever seen it? No, of course you haven’t: you’ve always been here, haven’t you, Reek?’

Reek tried to nod, the tiny movement causing pain to lance through him.

‘It’s forged from a thousand swords. They say one can cut oneself just by sitting in it, so you’ll like it. You’ll be on your knees at my feet. I will be the king, and you the fool. I’ll have to take a queen, of course, but I won’t be the first king with a pet eunuch. It’s you I’ll take to my bed at night, or fuck you out in the kennels, or in front of the whole city outside the Red Keep beside the many, many executions we shall have.’

And as his Master stalked forwards, Reek could see it all as plainly as if it had already happened, could see his Master wearing a crown and sitting on the throne, blood dripping from his hands and the court nothing but flayed corpses. Whilst outside castle walls lined with skin, the seven kingdoms burned. The fire so hot that not even the snows of the coming winter could quench it.

He was dragged back to the present by the chill of his rags being sliced open, the point of something pricking his skin. And as his Master came back around to stand before him, Reek saw what he held in his hands: his flaying knife in one, a branding iron in the other. And the tide roared, the sea bursting its banks, flooding over Reek, the salty weeds pulling him under.

 _‘No, Master, please_ ,’ he started to babble, crying out as he tried to struggle and the pain stabbed through him. ‘Please, Master, I’m s–sorry Master, I – I – I –’

 _‘Shhh_ , pet. Reek – Reek, it rhymes with _sneak_. I prefer you _meek_. You’ll never lie to me again. You’ll never look at the _fucking_ moon and think about leaving me. But _I’m_ a liar, I told you that, and I lied to you the first time we were down here. I told you our story wouldn’t have a happy ending. But I knew it would, knew that _this_ is our happy ending.’

He waved the branding iron while he spoke, the heat glancing against Reek’s skin, the X at its end glowing red. The cross of the Boltons’ sigil, the cross where they flayed, the cross where Reek was created and where he always ended up.

‘My mark: it means everyone will know you’re _mine_ ,’ his Master grinned as he spoke. ‘And maybe I’ll peel a few more of your parts while we’re down here. Which do you need least, _Reek_ , your hands or your feet?’

But Reek couldn’t answer, only screamed, screamed as his Master's brand sank into the flesh of his back over his tail bone, screamed as he submerged in the glow of fire, screamed as any last, lingering trace of Theon was burnt away, screamed as he craved his Master's hands on him, and screamed as he drowned in the cleansing agony of utter surrender.

_ ****The End****_


End file.
